Technical Assessment: Crashes Were Always Buys-In Hindsight, You Ignored

Every Crash Was a Buy: The Chart Doesn’t Lie, Your Mind Does

Introduction

There’s something grotesquely comedic about market crashes. Not the crash itself—the bone-snapping panic, the CNBC echo chamber on a loop like a horror film scored by clowns, the Twitter prophets high on schadenfreude, flexing hindsight like it’s foresight. That part’s brutal. No, the real comedy kicks in after—the dust settles, the body count tallied in red ink—and suddenly everyone’s a clairvoyant. “It was obvious,” they say. “Clear as day. I should’ve bought the dip.” Shoulda, coulda, didn’t.

Welcome to the post-crash confessional booth, where regret wears a suit and quotes Buffett, and everyone pretends they didn’t pee themselves at the bottom. The truth? Most investors don’t miss crashes because they lack intelligence. They miss them because they lack an emotional spine. Because when blood runs in the streets, their brain screams “danger” while the market quietly whispers “discount.” And they listen to the scream.

This is where the technical assessment was supposed to step in—not as decoration, but as a weapon. But you ignored it. You weren’t looking for patterns; you were looking for comfort. You wanted confirmation, not confrontation. And the market punished you for it.

You Ignored the Buy Signal Because It Was Drenched in Blood

Let’s be brutally clear: the best buying opportunities always look like cognitive dissonance. The tape is red, your P&L is gasping, and the VIX is spiking like a heart monitor in cardiac arrest. Mass psychology is in full meltdown—margin calls, forced selling, and financial nihilism. And that is precisely when the signal flashes. It’s not a whisper. It’s a scream. But you ignore it, because it doesn’t feel like an opportunity. It feels like drowning.

You didn’t miss the bottom because you didn’t know. You missed it because you couldn’t stomach it. There’s a difference.

Behavioural Economics 101: The Pain of Loss Is Not Rational

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky outlined it decades ago: losses hurt twice as much as gains feel good. But during a crash, that ratio gets warped. The pain isn’t just financial, it’s existential. Your confidence erodes—your strategy fractures. You’re no longer trading the market—you’re trading your own fear response. Welcome to the mirror maze.

Mass psychology can turn even seasoned traders into herd animals during market crashes. Everyone becomes a macro tourist. You suddenly become interested in German bond yields and Taiwanese export data. Why? Because you’re searching for a narrative that will justify your paralysis.

Technical Analysis: The Signals Were Screaming, You Just Had Earplugs On

Let’s talk facts. In every major crash of the past 40 years, technical reversal patterns fired off like flares during an air raid:

• 1987 Black Monday: RSI dropped into the single digits. Sentiment collapsed. The 50-day moving average sliced through the 200-day like a machete. Capitulation was obvious, but the pain made people think it was just the beginning.
• 2008 Financial Crisis: Double bottoms. Massive bullish divergences on MACD. Capitulation candles the size of billboards. Yet retail ran for the exits while hedge funds quietly built positions.
• March 2020 COVID Crash: RSI at historical lows. Put/Call ratios at extremes. VIX north of 80. The market dropped 35% in a month—and then doubled within a year. You blinked, and the opportunity was gone.

You know what didn’t work during those crashes? Feelings.

The Crowd Screams, The Chart Whispers

Charts aren’t emotional. They don’t get a margin called. They don’t care about Jerome Powell’s tone. They record reality without interpretation. And in crashes, they often signal reversal before the narrative does. However, technical signals are frequently overlooked because they appear before the crowd feels secure.

Take Fibonacci retracements—the 61.8% level isn’t magic, it’s math. But when a panic low bounces from that zone on volume, you better pay attention. When breadth indicators reverse from historic extremes, or when smart money flow indicators diverge from price, those aren’t flukes. They’re footprints. Somebody knows something—and it’s not you.

Why You Ignore Every Great Buy Signal: A Brutal Inventory

Let’s itemise your excuses:

1. “It might go lower.” It might. But it also might not. This is not a hostage negotiation—you won’t get a letter of confirmation from the market gods.
2. “The news is terrible.” Of course it is. That’s why it’s cheap. Great entries are born in horrible headlines.
3. “I’ll wait for confirmation.” By the time it feels confirmed, the asymmetry is gone. You’re buying the echo, not the opportunity.
4. “I got burned last time.” So did everyone. The difference is whether you learned or just licked your wounds.
5. “Everyone else is selling.” Exactly. That’s your buy signal.

Mass Psychology Is a Reverse Indicator

This should be tattooed on your wrist: If the crowd agrees, you’re probably wrong. Crashes are where mass psychology does its ugliest work—people panic not because it’s logical, but because everyone else is panicking.

Investor sentiment, the AAII surveys, fear and greed indexes—they all hit extreme lows during crashes. That’s your contrarian entry. If you’re waiting for the crowd to feel bullish before you buy, you’ll always be late. The best trades feel lonely when you enter and obvious when you exit. That’s the cycle.

But What If This Time Is Different?

Ah yes, the four most expensive words in investing. Every crash comes with its own special flavor of doom. Subprime loans. Pandemic death counts. Bank collapses. AI job destruction. You name it. The wrapper changes, but the candy is the same.

Markets crash. They puke out the weak. And then they rebound faster than your therapist can return your call. Your job isn’t to predict the bottom. It’s to be close enough to capitalize. Even buying in the bottom 20% of the move is enough to alter your entire trajectory.

Build the Damn Playbook Before the Fire Starts

If you’re building your plan during the crash, you’re already behind. Predefine what panic-worthy looks like to you. Have levels. Have triggers. Automate part of your execution. Don’t trust your lizard brain in a storm—it wants safety, not alpha.

A simple crash playbook might include:

• RSI < 20 on key indices
• VIX > 40
• Put/Call > 1.5
• Breadth thrust reversals
• Oversold sectors with macro tailwinds

And when those conditions align? Pull the damn trigger. Scale in. Use staged entries. But do not freeze.

Humor in the Fire: Laugh or Get Roasted

One guy on Reddit mortgaged his house to buy OTM puts at the COVID low. His username? @ApocalypseOptions. Another tweeted, “If this goes any lower, I’m gonna start shorting oxygen.”

Meanwhile, Berkshire quietly added billions.

Learn from this. When the clowns are juggling chainsaws on FinTwit, and everyone suddenly becomes a macro expert with a YouTube channel, that’s your cue to stop watching and start buying.

Conclusion: Hindsight Is for Cowards, Action Is for Warriors

You can worship Buffett. You can quote Soros. You can meditate in front of your chart setup with Tibetan bells. None of it matters if you don’t act when it counts. Crashes are test chambers. They separate storytellers from tacticians.

The next time the market falls apart, remember: the crash is the setup. Not the post-mortem. Not the TED Talk.

Will you buy when the world burns? Or will you tweet about it from the ashes?

The market doesn’t owe you clarity. It owes you volatility. And in that storm lies your edge—if you have the guts to seize it.

Make no mistake: every crash was a buy.

The only variable is whether you showed up or chickened out.

Tick tock. Game on.